When Urban Meyer brought the spread offense with him to Florida in 2005, it forced a new attitude toward offense for coaches around the SEC. / The Associated Press

Written by

David Jones

Florida Today

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Much was made of Urban Meyer's arrival at Florida and his spread offense that was growing in popularity in 2005. Little did Meyer realize what was coming with him.

Three years later, the spread is being used all over the SEC. As a result, scoring has picked up. For the first time since the SEC split into divisions in 1992, the average offensive game for a team in the league is more than 30 points a contest.

The previous best was 27.7 points per squad in 2001. This year, six teams are averaging 30 points or more. Four rank in the nation's top 10.

Kentucky and Florida are both over 40 points per contest. Both use the spread.

"It's amazing to see how much of it is all out there," Meyer said of the growth of the spread offense. "In the 1980s, it was all very basic. Then all of sudden you saw teams having some success. I think you can see your quarterback has to be involved to have some success. You can see Appalachian State and Oregon are hard to defend.

"I'm surprised it hasn't leaked to the NFL a little bit."

Why have so many teams started using offenses similar to Meyer? For one thing, it's had success in the SEC after some were skeptical. UF won the national title using a limited version last season. For another, it's hard to get the defensive personnel to stop the spread.

"The correlation between having some speed and matchup issues on the outside is what really makes a quarterback great," Meyer said. "I think defensive coaches need to have an abundance of personnel. If you want to play man (to man defense), now you have to play man on four of them as opposed to usually teams have one or two excellent corners and you're finding that mismatch somewhere."

In other words, Meyer's spread offense sends four and five offensive weapons on the attack and two corners can't defend that many players. It's meant that more teams had to go out and recruit extra defensive backs if they ever hoped to stop the Gators and other high-powered offenses like theirs.

But Vanderbilt head coach Bobby Johnson thinks another factor is the relaxing of the rules allowing linemen to use their hands more in blocking techniques.

"I think offenses have opened up a little bit, but also I think the way the game is officiated now is a big factor," he said. "It used to be when you had big defensive linemen and you weren't allowed to hold like you are today, and I'm talking about legal holding not illegal holding, it was just hard to move them out, hard to get around them. They just dominated people.

"Now with the new techniques allowed, more quarterbacks have got more time, you have more athletes out on the perimeter making plays. It's just harder to defend all that stuff."

In the '90s, Steve Spurrier started an evolution in the SEC by spreading the field, using five wide receivers and forcing defenses to cover a stable of talented receivers. In the late '90s, defenses answered by putting more pressure on quarterbacks, forcing the offense to adjust to block the extra blitzers or give up sacks.

Now the strategies have come full circle, with the offenses using the spread to cover the entire field and forcing opponents to use four or five defensive backs to match up. As a result, defenses try to keep opponents guessing. And that means somebody can lose big on any play.

"All the open sets and defenses playing as much pressure and man as they are, that allows opportunities for big plays," Tennessee coach Phil Fulmer agrees. "There are some really dynamic quarterbacks in this league right now, young and older. I would say those are probably the big things.

"This is, pretty obviously, a time that things are happening for offenses right now."